The Amnesiac

Part III: Chapter Two

Daniel sat on a stump in the middle of the woods. He mumbled to himself as he whittled, "There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations..."

The sound of his knife scuttled across the little piece of wood he worked on with diligence. 

"Yes, I understand that now."

"Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake....maybe-"

Muffled footsteps approached him,  but Daniel, in his near catatonic state, failed to notice them. 

"I thought I might find you here," said a voice thick and deep in tone. 

Daniel stiffened. "I thought I told you to leave me alone, Haman," he growled, "Go back to the pit your mother crawled out of."

There was the unmistakable tap...tap...tap of a foot on the forest floor. "Is that any way to talk to a professor?" 

Daniel turned around and gasped. The blood went out of his wide-eyed face. "Solomon?" 

~

Anatoly snapped to wakefulness. All at once he was immersed in the internal debate he'd waged within himself since the time he held Eloise in his arms. 

He danced around the subject which tormented him like the girls in those old-time spring festivals danced around the flower-pole. With each lap he drew nearer to the focal point, to the true heart of the question. 

Guilt. Blame. 

And who was really to blame anyway?

He shook that thought away. I'm not ready to answer that. Not yet. 

"Just stay the course, it'll all make sense soon." 

Anatoly's heart fluttered where once it had stopped whenever the voice, the dreadful voice, spoke to him. It no longer came with the same pain it used to, only the strange sensation of having to share his cranium with another. 

There is no voice, he told himself in a rare moment of clarity. There is no mystery. 

How does one know when they're insane? Does it creep up on them? Is there some threshold they have to pass before being sure? 

The voice giggled inside him. Had it read his thoughts? 

Anatoly gripped his head and moaned. "God help me," he muttered. 

"You shouldn't call on HIM for help," the voice chided, "I don't think you two are on good terms."

Anatoly shut his eyes and tried to ignore the other. After a brief episode of good humored laughter, it seemed to fade into some deeper recess of his mind. 

~

Grief is a miserable mistress. She attacks like lightning and echoes like thunder. She hides in the mist and laughs from the reeds. She is constant, she is eternal, she fears nothing and no one.

Harry had felt the lady death's foul claws fall upon him abruptly following the news of Eloise's demise. Frankly, it'd hit everyone hard. Their little group had all gravitated together freshman year of high school. Eloise... she'd been an important part of of their lives.  A confidant. A counselor. A crush. A friend.

It was strange to think she was gone. Almost impossible to believe.

Harry sat on his porch idly bouncing a pink rubber ball off the side of the house. There was somethings soothing in the dull thump the ball made off the wood wall, and the clap as it returned to his hand was a necessary reminder that he was still alive in the real world.